The gentleman’s agreement between search engines and websites was never formalized, but it was always clear. You allow Google to index your pages; Google will put you in its search engine results; people will find you while searching on Google and you monetize that traffic.
AI Overviews have appropriated the first half of this gentleman’s agreement. Google continues to read everything published on the web, but instead of sending people to the websites it deems most relevant, it answers the question the user asked at the top of the results page, removing the need for people to even click links and making said links effectively worthless.
The question is whether this constitutes a breach of contract, not a call for damages, lawsuits, or removals, but rather a renegotiation of terms, because there is no other way to put it. Should there be need for compensation for each citation, as a rate per thousand impressions as it were in the advertising world?
What does this look like from the perspective of the small site?
According to Google Search Console, in the last month, this domain has appeared 38,492 times in Google’s search results, generating 500 clicks, which is a click-through rate of 1.30% and an average position of 12.5. Google’s position partially explains the discrepancy, and while I would have been perfectly fine with 1.3%, I can hardly complain about only getting five hundred visitors out of thirty-eight thousand impressions.
The AI-generated referrals are present in the numbers as well, at least according to Google Analytics: 296 sessions initiated by AI assistants over the same period, as opposed to 999 for organic searches. One visitor for every three regular Google visitors who engage with our content via an AI assistant. Not bad, actually, and not much different than a regular link acquisition campaign, except for the glaring difference that the other end is not actively doing anything to bring traffic to this domain.
Scale that shape up and you get the numbers publishers are actually suing over. An Ahrefs study from February found AI Overviews correlate with a 58 percent reduction in click-through rate for top-ranking pages. Pew measured that when an AI Overview is present, 8 percent of users click a traditional result, against 15 percent when there isn't one.
Google already counts what it would have to pay for
Here's what makes the "it's too hard to measure" objection weak.
I know my site appeared 38,492 times because Google told me through their own analytics tool (which is another story for our reliance on Google). The counting infrastructure is finished, deployed, and already showing publishers their own numbers every day.
An AI CPM would need one additional field: how many times a given AI answer was built from your page, and how many people saw it. Google knows the answer to both. It has to know both, since it selects the sources and renders the result.
The obvious counterargument is that an impression isn't worth anything if nobody buys ads against it. But AI Mode carries ads, search carries ads, and the whole point of answering in place on Google's part is to keep the user on Google's page where Google's inventory lives.
Publishers have priced this kind of thing before. Syndication deals, wire fees, licensing. A per-thousand-citation rate is not a stranger concept than any of those. Somebody would have to argue about whether a citation is worth more or less than a click.
The part that makes it coercive
Google's position, as summarized in coverage of the Penske Media lawsuit, is that publishers can stop Google using their material. The catch is what that requires: blocking the crawler means leaving the search index too. As one writeup put it, doing so "may require them to surrender visibility within the world's dominant search engine. That is not much of a choice."
There is no checkbox for "index me, don't summarize me." Consent to the new use is bundled into consent to the old one, and the old one is how a lot of businesses stay alive.
Penske, which publishes Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter, took that to court. At a hearing, Judge Amit Mehta called the situation "really unfair" and asked whether Google's AI products are being built "on the backs of the publishers." It's notable for the judge who handled Google's search monopoly case to say out loud.
Google's answer so far has been product changes rather than payments: a Further Exploration section with curated links at the end of AI Overviews, labels marking links from publications you already subscribe to, and site names on hover. Those are attribution improvements. They are an attempt to make the existing exchange feel more generous without changing what flows in either direction.
Where this is heading
I don't think Google will pay a citation rate voluntarily. There's no competitive pressure to, the counting would establish a liability it currently doesn't have, and a company that spent two decades arguing links are compensation will not casually agree that they aren't.
What seems more likely is something that's already forming: bilateral licensing deals with publishers big enough to be worth signing, and nothing for the small guy, with courts deciding cases brought up by smaller publishers. For now, that leaves most of the web in the same position I'm in, which is producing the material that trains and feeds these answers in exchange for a shrinking slice of the traffic it generates.
Sources
The Next Web: Google updates AI Overviews as publisher click decline triggers antitrust suits - The Ahrefs February 2026 finding of a 58 percent click-through reduction for top-ranking pages, the Pew figures of 8 percent versus 15 percent click rates with and without an AI Overview, and Google's Further Exploration links, subscription labels and inline link context changes.
Strategic Revenue: Judge questions Google's traffic grab in Penske vs Google - Judge Amit Mehta's remarks that the situation seems "really unfair" and his question about products built "on the backs of the publishers," Penske's allegation that AI Overviews remove the reason to visit source sites, and the observation that blocking Google's use may require surrendering search visibility.
Traffic figures for this site are from Google Search Console and GA4 for the 90 days ending September 7, 2026.
